So things have seemed pretty dead lately. Let's test and see if anyone is still reading these. ;)
The design of the game is getting away from adventure and daily abilities, due to the fact that these were rarely prepared and almost never used. Because of this, all actions will refresh after one minute of rest; they just may not be available as early as they otherwise were.
Beside this, we have adventure-use item abilities. These used to be dailies, but were changed to adventure frequency after careful consideration. Even then, it seemed like they never got used. They were always hoarded "just in case," making it effectively worthless to own an item that had them.
The question becomes, how do we allow these to be used all the time without making them too powerful. I believe I have a possible answer: We make item actions like regular actions, but force characters to spend one minute recharging each item the same way they rest and refresh their own actions.
So let's say you have a sword with a Ruin in it. You can use this Ruin any time you like just like normal, but when you use it, it doesn't come back until you spend one minute to recharge the sword.
The trick here is that this is separate from your normal rest. Your own actions will be the highest priority, meaning you're not likely to sit down and recharge item actions in the middle of a large battle. Not unless it's a really nice item, of course.
What do you guys think? Would this change make item actions truly useful? Would it be overpowered? Share your opinions if you're still here to give them.
I think Scott has a vaild point about letting the recently changed system to work out for a bit before we change it.
That being said, I liked the idea of each player having a single "item action" that could be used to activate a special effect on any one of their items. This item action refreshes with the PC's other actions in the one minute refresh. This gives a player with several items some versatility in their use, but prevents the items from being overly powerful in any single combat. I think we could also create a Merit to allow Rogues or other similar classes to purchase additional item uses.
Is there a Thad score on this, concept, btw?
The concept was to treat each item like a separate character that needed to be refreshed, Scott, so it's one minute per item. Items with multiple actions, or multiple uses of the same action, would have those actions refreshed at the same time, which would make it more optimal to stack several enchantments on the same item.
I'd say both of these ideas have a THS score of 3, Jenn. I want item abilities to be useful all the time, and I want to get away from abilities that take a long time to refresh. That's my real goal, but I'm open to suggestions on how to achieve it.
I am of the mindset that charging items is a good idea, however I agree that enchanting is not really a viable option right now for most players. I think that revamping some of the pricing would help this, in addition to the refreshing an item. It makes the cost a little easier to bear for enchanting stuff with multiple charges, and makes you sit out to get stuff back much faster than waiting for ten minutes to refresh.
Just for clarification.....say I have a weapon and a shield, and am low on health. I receive a trance from someone. can I stay in the trance for a minute and a half to refresh all three things, or does it only apply to one of the refreshes? I like the idea of being able to remain tranced longer for my own selfish reasons, but get why people may want it the other way. A good compromise is to make a trance all mechanic later on for the classes who will get access to trance, which I believe should include bards now that I think about it.
I'm of the mindset that we should keep item recharge at 1/A - just reduce the cost of the enchants or make item enchanting easier to do so that players can actually manage to get multiple x/A enchants as opposed to the 1/A we have now. Most of the 1/A enchants out there now that are good used to be 1/D, and the 1/A change was only in place for 1-2 games this year. I'd say we give it some time to ride, and not worry about that until later in the play tests in the off season.
If you're doing an item refresh is it 1 min per charge, 1 min per item, or 1 min for all items/charges after your 1 min personal refresh?
Personally I think being able to recharge an item after a minute of rest is pretty damn powerful - regardless of what the enchant is.